Wild About the Man. Joss Wood

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       CHAPTER ONE

      Luella Dawson’s blog:

      So, friends, my interview with Cai Campbell and Clem Copeland on my show, Night Drive with Luella last night was so much more than I—we all—expected. There was the announcement of their split—no surprise there—but what followed had us all agape. For the past ten years Cai has ducked the question of marrying Clem, so none of us expected to meet Cai’s new fiancée (blonde, buxom). We were just recovering from that when he told us that he’d been shooting blanks all these years—poor Clem. Who can forget that episode of The Crazy Cs where Clem told us how her infertility was eating away at her soul?

      IT WAS early evening before Nick Sherwood made it to his desk, dusty, grumpy and sweaty. His mouth held all the moisture of the Kalahari Desert and he felt he was melting from the inside out. After grabbing a bottle of water from the small fridge behind his desk, he stood underneath the air conditioner, cracked the top of the water bottle and swallowed the contents in three big gulps. Tossing the bottle into the dustbin at his feet, he immediately opened another, resting the icy plastic against his forehead when the worst of his thirst was quenched. He’d spent most of the day in the seventeenth level of hell and the raging heat outside had only been a minor contributing factor to his nightmare day.

      Normally he enjoyed taking the walking photo-safaris and it was a good way to connect with his guests; they loved the personal touch of having the owner of the six-star lodge conduct the tours. Except that he’d spent the last six hours walking so slowly that ants had dashed past them, constantly wondering when he’d have to give one of his overweight, red-faced charges CPR.

      Of course they’d seen no animals, mostly because they couldn’t keep their mouths shut for more than five minutes. Wildlife tended to run when confronted with loud curses, shouts and laughter.

      Nick understood the animals’ flight reaction; he’d considered doing the same many, many times and at various points throughout the day.

      He dropped into his chair and yanked open the messy top drawer of his desk, hoping to find a container of aspirin. Eventually he found the pills and dry-swallowed three, chasing them down with the water left in the bottle in his hand.

      He needed a cold beer, a swim and hot sex.

      What he’d get was maintenance reports, the payroll and e-mails.

      Nick pulled his computer out of standby and reached for the file on the corner of his desk. He’d barely cracked open the cover when a Skype call came in. He looked at the computer and frowned when he saw the name of his silent partner and chief investor. Hugh Copeland rarely called him and had never, in the ten years he’d known him, Skyped him.

      ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

      Copeland was at least sixty-five, formal, monstrously wealthy and Nick was still in debt to him for a couple of million. Setting up a six-star lodge wasn’t cheap and maintaining a game reserve and an animal rehabilitation sanctuary СКАЧАТЬ